Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100 (1944)
For more on the Fifth Symphony, listen to David Nice on BBC3 here.
Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 54 (1939)
Isaak Glikman said of responses to the Sixth Symphony:
Naturally, I hid from the composer the inevitable musicians’ talk. With rare exceptions, it drove me to despair. Some musicians held that the conceited young composer, having dared to break with the tradition of the symphonic cycle, had produced a formless piece in three movements. Others maliciously implied that Shostakovich had locked himself away in an ivory tower, and no longer knew what was going on around him; the result was that the opening Largo was so dull and inert as to bring on a stupefied torpor. And a third group just laughed goodheartedly, saying that the finale was nothing more than a depiction of a football match with its successes and reversals of fortune. [Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich, A Life Remembered, Second Edition, p. 164]
Listen to Paavo Järvi talk about the Sixth Symphony at about 13:40 here.
For more on the Sixth Symphony, click here.
With thanks to David Nice for identifying these performances and for the continued illuminating commentary in his Russian Music course.